The Place of locative Ps and light nouns

Arhonto Terzi

Abstract

In the first part of the talk I address the status of locative prepositions, with an interest in their positioning along the lexical vs. functional dimension. Focusing on the relationship locatives bear with their complements, I demonstrate - with evidence from various languages - that their structure involves a lexical and a functional component. The former is a consequence of the fact they are modifiers of a lexical element: this is a non-phonologically realized noun which I call Place and which denotes the physical space surrounding the ground argument of locatives. It is the presence of Place that gives locative prepositions a nominal flavor across many languages. The functional component of locatives results from the fact that the phrase containing Place is the complement of a functional head, PLoc. As for the ground argument of locatives, I claim that it is the possessor of Place.

In the second part of the talk I focus on the silent noun Place, and investigate whether aspects of its behavior are